Joanne Yulan is a Scottish-born artist but of Chinese, South African descent. Painting since 2011 she has developed a language for her art that reflects her global heritage. She was encouraged to paint as a child and her mother introduced her at that time to the art of Chinese calligraphy. As an art student, she was drawn to minimal modern art. Her works combine the fluidity and spontaneity of painterly brush strokes with a precise eye for composition and space. Her interest in process painting reminiscent of the heroic works of Abstract Expressionism that dominated mid-century Western Art.
Where previous paintings were inspired by ancient Chinese characters, Yulan’s latest works are further influenced by the artist’s father- a renowned botanist whose research trips to the forests of Southeast Asia provided countless samples of pressed flora from which the following images are derived.
ART
RECENT WORKS
This new body of work grew from a site-specific commission for a client in London. She has been collecting my paintings over the years, and it felt like the right moment to immerse myself further in the possibilities of colour. The teals and greens are drawn from a recent visit to the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens, where I wandered through greenhouses devoted to the study of a particular family of plants.
These new works explore the forms and fragments of imagined plants, leaves, and components that drop, curve, and curl in gentle, unpredictable ways. They seem gathered as specimens, yet to be arranged, catalogued, and preserved. Each piece captures a fleeting moment of a living organism, holding it in memory, delicate and fragile, like a pressed flower.
ART AND
DECOR
Over the last ten years, Joanne Yulan’s contemporary artwork has been quietly collected by individuals and interior designers for their clients all over the world. She has been commissioned to create artworks for specific projects, by architects and developers. If you have a project you’d like to discuss then do contact us.
